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'Perhaps humankind can't bear too much reality, but neither can it bear too much unreality, too much abuse of the truth.' (Saul Bellow)

'448 OMAR KHAYYÁM Omar had a personality; I, for better or worse, have none. In an hour I’ll have strayed from what I am at this moment; tomorrow I’ll have forgotten what I am today. Those who are who they are, like Omar, live in just one world, the external one. Those who aren’t who they are, like me, live not only in the external world but also in a diversified, ever-changing inner world. Try as we might, we could never have the same philosophy as Omar’s. I harbour in me, like unwanted souls, the very philosophies I criticize. Omar could reject them all, for they were all external to him, but I can’t reject them, because they’re me.' (F Pessoa)

'Mrs Glass looked over, abstractedly, at the blue bathmat, across the tiled floor. Zooey stood as still as possible, in order not to break her mood. "You can't live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes," Mrs Glass said to the bathmat, then turned again toward Zooey and gave him a long look, with very little, if any, morality in it. "Regardless of what you may think, young man," she said.' (JD Salinger)

'Art only begins where imitation ends.' (Oscar Wilde)

'"I like zooey's blog," Steiner would say, "It's the only internet site with a foyer. Saul and I often meet there, by the ethereal kiosk. The ice-cream is splendid."' (ThetisMercurio)

'What is the use of telling people repeatedly that the Society is not a sect and then behave as if it were one?' (Steiner)

'Laughter means distance. Where laughter is absent, madness begins. The moment one takes the world with complete seriousness one is potentially insane.' (Jens Bjørneboe)

'If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.' (Oscar Wilde)

'Let's act like sphinxes, however falsely, until we reach the point of no longer knowing who we are. For we are, in fact, false sphinxes, with no idea of what we are in reality. The only way to be in agreement with life is to disagree with ourselves. Absurdity is divine.' (F Pessoa)

the basics

the posts on this blog are written by alicia hamberg, with the guidance of mr dog, canineosophist, and with inspiration from rudolf steiner, anthroposophist, and the rest of our friends, people, dogs and various strange beings who hang out with us in this extraordinary ethereal kiosk

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‘wolfram: the boy who went to war’

There’s a story in The Guardian (and also, apparently, a book called Wolfram: The Boy Who Went to War). I don’t know how to file this story, but perhaps as peculiar people who were anthroposophists. Or anthroposophists who weren’t nazis. (Don’t tell me I don’t acknowledge them!) Said tongue-in-cheek. A British child of German descent draws a swastika to symbolize her family in a school project (not knowing what the swastika has come to represent):

The swastika incident led me to ask Wolfram – now 87 and a distinguished artist – all the questions I had never dared to put to him. His family, he told me, had been against Hitler from the outset. His father, Erwin, was a bohemian animal artist who kept a large menagerie in the garden. He was also a freemason, who counted many intellectual Jews among his clients and friends.

Wolfram’s mother, Marie Charlotte, was equally idiosyncratic: highly cultivated, she was deeply involved in the Rudolf Steiner movement, with its emphasis on the freedom of individual thought. The family lived in a rambling villa just outside the town of Pforzheim, in southern Germany. One of Wolfram’s earliest memories is of spying on the maid as she took her bath. Her naked body was not the only attraction. She always bathed with her pet snake coiled around her neck.

[…]

As Hitler consolidated his grip on power, Wolfram’s parents saw their beloved Germany steadily overtaken by forces of darkness. They continued to invite free-thinking friends to their hilltop home. But Wolfram’s mother was now under Gestapo surveillance, making life increasingly intolerable.